Village Car Service? Not in Rockville Centre.

Village rejects taxi company’s application

After a nearly two-year wait, Lynbrook-based Village Car Service’s application to operate a taxi service in Rockville Centre has been rejected by Village Administrator Keith Spadaro.

In April 2011, Village Car Service filed an application to run its taxi service in the village, and its approval would have allowed the company to pick up and drop off customers within village boundaries, which it cannot currently do. All Island Transportation is the sole taxi service operating in Rockville Centre, and has been licensed by the village for more than 40 years.

“We’ve always had one car service, and it’s always kind of worked,” said Spadaro. Adding a second taxi service, he said, would be “based on necessity, and I don’t think we need a second car service.”

Residents submitted more than 100 letters to Village Car Service that were forwarded to the village, asking for the company to be allowed to operate. But the submissions were form letters that people signed.

“[Village Car Service] put out a public notice and sent out a letter — basically a form letter with a self-addressed stamped envelope, and that’s the only ones I got back,” Spadaro said. “No one really writing. So I was unconvinced. All Island does a good job. They have a base here, where I don’t believe Village would have a base here.”

David O’Neill, vice president and operations manager for Village Car Service, said he was not surprised by the rejection of his company’s application. “Obviously the demand is there,” he said. “We have more than 100 letters from residents that we submitted, asking for the approval.”

Asked about the form letters that the company sent out in support of its application, O’Neill said, “They didn’t have to send them back to us.”

Sid Tanenbaum, who lived in Woodmere and owned a metal-stamping shop in Far Rockaway, where he was known more for his charitable ways than his two-handed set shot, has been honored for the past 30 years with a basketball tournament that raises scholarship money for students in the Five Towns.